


Use Your Noodle

by peterqpan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25077553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterqpan/pseuds/peterqpan
Summary: Nanny Ashtoreth is overly supportive of Warlock's artistic endeavors, to her satisfaction and everyone else's annoyance.  A Tumblr prompt:  Time Loop + Ineffable Husbands.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Use Your Noodle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Horka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horka/gifts).



The first time Nanny picked Warlock up from school, he was shoving a pasta-on-paper representation of a flower in the trash with one foot. She retrieved it, lifting a math textbook soaked in soda, and flicking away a used band-aid, and Warlock groaned as though the entirety of a disapproving kindergarten teacher was crawling up his throat. 

“It’s really quite...something,” she told him, and he groaned again, trying to pull it away. “Is it for Brother Francis?”

“It’s in the _garbage,”_ Warlock pointed out, trying to return it to its place of origin between the halves of a discarded ham sandwich. 

“Nonsense,” said Nanny Astoreth, waving a hand. Time was a bit like the knotted bundle of electrical cords behind the Dowling television set—unwieldy, fragile, and all leading to unknown results—but she skipped over the dusty cord like a jump rope, and cut Warlock off before he’d even left the classroom. She surveyed the un-crumpled result. “Oh.”

“It’s awful,” Warlock moaned. “They’re _all awful.”_

“Why not give it to Brother Francis anyway,” Nanny told him, allowing herself to smirk. “He likes flowers, after all.”

Brother Francis recieved it with remarkable aplomb, thanking Warlock for thinking of him with only the barest of glances between the pasta art and the fireplace, and Nanny Astoreth felt a twinge of disappointment as she helped Warlock level his green GI figures with tiny plastic horses, in a game they referred to as “Genocide”. 

“Thank god I didn’t use the glitter,” he told a plastic horse, shaking his head. “Brother Francis says birds can eat it and get sick.”

Nanny froze. “Glitter was an _option?”_

* * *

She tugged at the single cord in the cable of time again, hoping nothing turned off, or failed, in the future, to turn on, and met Warlock after class. “Go back and use some glitter. True evil isn’t _stingy,_ you know.” 

He stared at her, glancing up and down the corridor, then slowly stepped backwards into the classroom. 

Brother Francis accepted the flower with the same patient smile, but Nanny Astoreth noticed he touched only the edges, and winced at the soft dusting of glitter on his shoes.

“He hates glitter,” Warlock told her, clomping upstairs. “If I was going to color the flower, I should have used the _dye.”_

 _“Dye,_ you say,” repeated Nanny Ashtoreth, pausing with one bat-buckled shoe in mid-air. 

* * *

This time, she flailed at him through the safety glass of the door _during_ class, and Warlock stared at her for several seconds before tiptoeing over. “Dye your noodles,” she hissed through the cracked door, and he glanced around, like they were completing an illicit deal in kindergarten pasta. 

“I’ll smell like _vinegar,”_ he muttered back, and she smiled, showing all of her teeth. He set his jaw, eyes narrowed, and she crouched to whisper through the door.

“It’s a _flower,_ right,” she told him, and his face set further in suspicion. “You could give it to Brother Francis.” 

“No,” he told her. “Stop. It’s _school._ You’re being _evil_ again.”

“He _loves_ flowers,” she said, and he crossed his arms, thinking. “I’ll make cookies,” she tried, and he squinted very hard at her, then turned on his heel, throwing his hands in the air. “Don’t forget the glitter,” she hissed after him, and he turned around and stuck out his tongue.

Brother Francis regarded the blotchy, brightly dyed pasta, sliding slightly in the glue, and dusted liberally with glitter, and was very still. Warlock glanced up at him, shifted his feet, and then glanced at Nanny Ashtoreth, who was trying to keep her dignity and not bounce lightly on her toes. 

“There’s cookies,” Warlock blurted, red-faced, and Brother Francis sat the gift aside, shuffling to the sink.

“We must wash up for cookies,” he told Warlock, who bit his lip guiltily, glancing at the pasta flower.

Brother Francis caught the look, and patted his head. “Thank you for the thought, Warlock.”

Nanny Ashtoreth gritted her teeth. 

As she put Warlock to bed that night, and read him tales of great empires through history (with an emphasis on Caligula), she paused occasionally. Finally, she closed the book, leaning in to whisper, “Was there anything _else_ you could do with the pasta art?”

“We’re _done_ with that project,” Warlock squeaked, shaking his head rapidly. “No more pasta.”

“But _was_ there?” she pressed, and he sealed his fate with a slow nod.

* * *

This time she crouched outside the classroom between a laurel bush and a fire hydrant, and sent a dark beetle the size of Warlock’s fist flying by his face to get his attention. It sounded like a helicopter. He stared after it, and saw her, then scrambled over to the window, shooting glances between her and the door. 

“How did you get out there so fast?!” he whined, and she stood on her toes to see that he’d already begun dying noodles, as her past self had requested. 

“What _else_ can you do to it,” she asked hungrily, wondering why she hadn’t asked something so open-ended before. 

“...we can have her take it out back and spray paint it gold or silver, if we want,” he said warily. “But—”

“Name your price,” Nanny Astoreth whispered back, and he returned to his table with great determination, and the promise his father would be tempted into a family visit to Disneyland.

That night Brother Francis could barely speak, transfixed by the sticky, chemical-smelling work of bombastic creativity before him, but he managed to lift his hand, pat Warlock’s head, and thank him, while reserving a truly chilling glance for Nanny Ashtoreth, who wondered, idly, if he’d noticed her meddling. “Get your boots off the table,” he whispered the next moment, so she brightened with innocence.

That night, Warlock was pensive. “Those sticks and things you put in my cider,” he said, and Nanny Ashtoreth waited, handing him his Hellhound slippers. “What if...what if I glued some of _those_ on. It’d _smell_ better.” 

“My darling overlord,” Nanny Astoreth said fondly, and yanked the carefully-arranged travel route of space and time one more time to do her evil bidding.

* * *

The resultant pasta flower was truly resplendent—wafting the scents of glue, spray paint, vinegar, and cinnamon, and prompting Warlock to confidently press Brother Francis into breathing deeply, his nose a bare inch from the redolent bloom of alternating primary colored and metallic noodles. Brother Francis’ eye twitched, and his fond head pat to Warlock was marred by shaking fingers. Warlock beamed, trading a sly wink with Nanny Ashtoreth, as Brother Francis registered that his hand was now adhered to Warlock’s hair. 

“Why don’t you have a nice bathe after all that...hard work,” Brother Francis told him, and Warlock glanced nervously between them, but couldn’t suppress a giggle as he ran off.

Nanny Astoreth blinked into the eyes of Brother Francis, who was smiling sweetly as he stepped over to the stove, and put a pan full of water on the burner. “How ingenious,” he said. “How did you two know I had just enough left over?”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, her stomach going a bit sour with dread, even as her mouth tried to twitch into a grin.

Brother Francis came back over with a pair of tongs, and lifted the pasta masterpiece. “I made pasta sauce for myself for dinner,” he said softly, holding the noodle flower over the open, bubbling pan. A sad trail of glitter sauntered downward, swirling in the steam. _“There’s just enough left for pasta for you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for all your support, Horka! <3 <3 <3!


End file.
